How to complete the LSE Graduate Financial Support Application

Most of Section A has been automatically completed using information you have already supplied in your application for admission to the School. If you feel any of this information may be incorrect, please contact the Graduate Admissions Office.

Information about the programme(s) you have applied for, and whether you intend to study full or part time, has been automatically completed using information you have already supplied in your application for admission to the School. If you feel any of this information may be incorrect, please contact the Graduate Admissions Office.

B3 and B4: You should give details of the degree level qualifications you hold and any degree level qualifications still pending.

B5: If you have received any scholarships for your education to date, you should provide details.

C1: Please indicate whether in the year before your proposed programme at LSE (ie, October - September) you have been working or studying. You should indicate as many of these that apply to you, since at different points of this year you may be engaged in different activities. You may be engaged in other activities, such as voluntary work or travel, instead of or as well as working/studying, but there is no need to indicate this here.

If you have been employed at any point during the year, please give the name and location of your employer. The location should be the city, or nearest city, and the country. If you have held a number of jobs during the year in question, you should put the most significant.

C2: Please provide us with your expected total net income (after tax) during the 12 months immediately preceding the start of your programme (ie October - September). This will need to be an intelligent estimate, especially if you are planning to change jobs, obtain a new job (including summer vacation work), or undertake voluntary work or travel before beginning your master's programme. Only you can make a realistic estimate and we understand that circumstances can change. It also does not have to be income from work, if you are living off another source of income such as contributions from parents or a spouse, a pension or savings, this income should be included. Student loans or scholarships should not be included, however.

The figure in this field must be a round number not including pence, eg, £12000, not £12,000.00, or £12.000. Punctuation, including commas and decimal points, is not permitted in this field.

C3: Please list any loans you have already taken out to finance your previous or current (if you are currently studying) study, including the academic year in which you took it out, the amount you borrowed, the amount you have outstanding and the period of time you have in which to repay it. If you took out a loan from the same source for more than one year of your undergraduate degree, there is no need to enter these separately. For example, if you took a loan from Student Finance for your undergraduate degree, you need only enter the total debt you have accrued during the duration of your degree (and the repayment period on these can be listed as "25 years").

C4: If you have not taken out loans to finance your previous or current study, please give some information about how you are financing your undergraduate degree, eg, help from family/household, scholarships, government support.

C5: This section is an opportunity for you to tell us if you have a disability or medical condition which could affect your financial situation during your LSE programme. We recommend that students with a disability make the School aware of their situation. If you have a disability which you have not yet declared, please declare it by submitting the extra information form request (11) and it will be added to your application for admission.  

Guide to services provided by LSE for disabled students 
Disabled Students' Allowances (Home students only)

This section is designed to obtain information from you about your current living arrangements.

D1: We need to know whether you will be receiving any financial support from your household. Your household is the group of people you ordinarily live with as a family. This could include parents or a partner/spouse. It would not normally include people you are living with in a flat or house share, unless these people are supporting you financially and directly contributing to your studies. You may currently be living away from your family/household for a temporary period of time, eg, for the purposes of studying, but this is not relevant since we require information about the people you ordinarily live with, if they will be providing you with financial support. If you are expecting to receive some support from your household, you will need to answer D1a, D1b and D1c.

D1a: If you expect to receive household support, you will be asked to provide details. The amount being contributed must be given in number format, in GBP and must not include pence.

Two year or part time programmes: we will assume that if you are applying for a two year full or part time programme, you will receive the same contribution for each academic year. It may therefore be necessary to halve the contribution figure you enter. For example, if someone is giving you £10,000 in total for your programme, you would only enter £5,000 in the table, and we will assume you have a further £5,000 for the second year of your programme.

D1b: If you expect to receive household support, you will also need to give the combined net income (after tax) of your household during the 12 months immediately preceding the start of your programme (ie, October - September), and details about all the people this income supports.

The figure in this field must be given in GBP and not include pence. Punctuation, including commas and decimal points, is not permitted in this field.

D1c: You will need to add additional members of the household supported by the income included in D1b, e.g. siblings. Do not include yourself or the people you have listed in the contributions table (D1a). It is important that everyone who your household income supports is included. There is no need to include an "occupation" for anyone under the age of 16, please use "n/a".

If you are made an offer of an award, we will ask you to provide supporting documentation on any additional people supported by the household income listed in D1c. 

D2: We also need to know whether you personally support any dependants, and if so, how many. Dependants may be classified as anyone who is wholly or mainly financially dependant on you. This would normally refer to dependant children; other dependant relatives should only be included if they completely rely on you to support them. Please provide details of each dependant. This should include their name, age and relationship to you. Dependants included in D1 should not be counted again.

If you are made an offer of an award, we will ask you to provide supporting documentation on any dependants listed in D2.  

This section seeks to find out if there are any other factors which will affect your financial situation, either positively or negatively, whilst you are studying at LSE.

This includes whether there will be other members of your household in higher education and/or studying overseas, whether you expect to receive contributions from anyone outside your household and whether you have any other sources of personal income.

E3: Personal income sources may include the sale of assets, such as property or a car, savings, interest from savings or social security benefits. Figures must be given in number format, in £ sterling.

Two year or part time programmes: we will assume that if you are applying for a two year full or part time programme, you will have the same amount available for each academic year. It may therefore be necessary to halve the figure you enter. For example, if you intend to sell a car for £4,000, you would only enter £2,000 in the table, and we will assume you have a further £2,000 for the second year of your programme.

E4: Many students will supplement their income by undertaking Part time work whilst studying. There are lots of part time jobs available in London. LSE Careers and vacancies can offer advice on finding part time work once you arrive in London.

The School strongly recommends that you work no more than 15 hours per week since it is important that you devote sufficient time to the academic demands of your programme. You will be expected to produce regular course-work and prepare for seminars, as well as study for examinations. An excessive amount of part time work can have a detrimental effect on academic performance.

The Home Office allows anyone studying in the UK on a student visa to work part-time during the term (up to 20 hours a week) and any number of hours during vacation periods. You should check that you have a visa which allows you to work in the UK before applying for any job. 

E5: If you have applied, or intend to apply for, other (non LSE) financial support in the form of non-repayable scholarships, grants or bursaries, please provide details. If you have already been successful with an application, please complete the value of your award in the "Amount secured" column. If you are still awaiting the outcome, please use the "Date result expected" column.

If we offer you an award from the Graduate Support Scheme, proof that you have been unsuccessful with your other application(s) may be requested at our discretion. If you are subsequently successful with another non LSE scholarship application, you must inform us and provide copies of notification letters. In "Contact details", you should give a phone number or email or web address of the scholarship awarding body.

It is important that you research the eligibility requirements of any particular scholarship or funding sources which you are hoping to apply for, to ensure that you will definitely be able to apply and have a chance of success (eg you haven't missed the deadline, you meet any nationality or residence requirements, the funding is still being offered), so that you can give a realistic idea of other financial support you can apply for.

Careful personal research is the best way to identify sources of financial support which might be applicable to your particular circumstances, but there are a number of websites which provide a good starting point:

www.britishcouncil.org
www.ukcisa.org.uk 
www.acu.ac.uk
www.postgraduatestudentships.co.uk
www.studentcashpoint.co.uk

Loans should not be entered in the table in E5 as these are dealt with in E6.

Two year or part time programmes: we will assume that if you are applying for a two year full or part time programme, you will have the same amount available for each academic year. It may therefore be necessary to halve the figure you enter. For example, if you receive a scholarship for £20,000 for the duration of your programme, you would only enter £10,000 in the table, and we will assume you have a further £10,000 for the second year of your programme.

E6: We need to know if you intend to take out a loan to help finance your studies, and the repayment period (Duration (in years) field) for it.

LSE does not offer loans to students. It does not recommend any particular lending institution and nor does it have any preferential agreements. Loans are a private arrangement between you and a lending institution and are subject to the usual credit and eligibility checks.

It is virtually impossible for overseas students to obtain a loan from a British bank or other lending institution. If you are an overseas student, you are far more likely to be able to obtain a loan from your country of permanent residence.

Find out more about funding available from the UK and other overseas governments.

Two year or part time programmes: we will assume that if you are applying for a two year full or part time programme, you will have the same amount available for each academic year. It may therefore be necessary to halve the figure you enter. For example, if you obtain a loan of £8,000 for the duration of your programme, you would only enter £4,000 in the table, and we will assume you have a further £4,000 for the second year of your programme.

E7: You may have some financial obligations which will affect the amount you have available for your programme. This might include medical bills, or the repayment of a previous educational loan. If you do have existing obligations, please give details. If you have taken out a loan for a previous study programme, please do not include this if it is deferrable whilst you are studying/not earning or earning under a minimum level, eg, UK students with their undergraduate Student Loan - you will not be expected to repay any of this whilst you are studying.

This is not an opportunity to tell us about general living cost expenditure, eg, mortgage repayments or rent, childcare costs, utility bills etc. Any obligations listed should be exceptional. If credit card or student loan debts are listed, these must be the minimum annual repayment, not the total amount of the debt. Your obligations figure will be directly factored into our calculation of your funding shortfall. Large obligations figures can actually push the funding shortfall to a minus figure. Please bear in mind that  Graduate Support Scheme awards are intended to supplement funding already secured or expected, and not to provide a full funding package to applicants.

Most of the fields on this page have been pre-populated with information you provided earlier in the form. Amounts for part time employment are based on your answer to E4 and on an average hourly wage of £7.50.

In addition, we have pre-populated the costs associated with your master's programme. The tuition fees are populated based on your first choice programme, and are for illustrative purposes only. This will be amended should you subsequently receive an offer for a programme where the tuition fee is higher or lower.

If no data is populated in the programme costs section (in Fees or Living costs), you will be unable to continue with your application. Please Contact the Financial Support Office who will be able to resolve the situation and enable you to continue with your application.

For living costs, we use a figure of £1,200 per month. More about living costs and how to budget during your time at LSE. The School cannot fund the costs of bringing dependants to London.

By deducting the amount you have secured, or hope to secure, from the costs associated with your programme, the system will calculate the Current assessed funding shortfall. You are then invited to enter the minimum amount of financial support that will allow you to take up your place at LSE - enter the figure in GBP and do not include pence. If there is a difference between the Current assessed funding shortfall and your minimum amount, you must tick one of the boxes to state the reason AND provide additional information in the text box. If you do not complete this check box and text there will be an error shown on clicking Check Complete to advise you to complete the necessary fields.

Failure to provide a full, specific and realistic explanation will negatively affect assessment of your application. Full and specific means showing EXACTLY how you have reached your minimum amount, if it is different from ours.

Please note that details mentioned in this section which should have been mentioned in Section D or E, such as additional possible funding from loans or household, will be disregarded if they are mentioned at this point for the first time. The form should be completed in full with all the other sources of funding open to you. Funding from pending scholarship applications or other unconfirmed sources cannot be taken into consideration either in Section E or Section F.

Completion of a statement is necessary for consideration for LSE scholarships. If you decide not to complete the statement, there will be no opportunity to add one at a later date and you will receive no further consideration for financial support opportunities after the Graduate Support Scheme decision has been made.

Please note that completion of the statement is not necessary for consideration for a Graduate Support Scheme Award. This is because assessment for a Graduate Support Scheme Award is automated and will not be able to review the statement.

You are required to write a statement, of no more than 8,000 characters including spaces, explaining why you have applied for financial support. Although we are also interested in your academic interests, work experience and future career objectives, it is very important that you tell us why you are particularly deserving of financial support.

If you wish to write the statement in a word processing application such as Microsoft Word, you may copy and paste into the online application. When pasting from a word processing application, please ensure you do not inadvertently paste extra blank lines or characters at the end of the document, as these will count towards your character count. 8,000 characters should be in the region of 1,100 words but this is a guideline only. If you can get the system to accept your statement as within the character limit, it doesn't matter how many words it has.

Some of our scholarships for overseas students require the award holder to return to their country of permanent residence after the tenure of their award is finished. This is made clear in the information about the award on the relevant webpage. If you do not indicate your destination after graduation on your application, this will mean that you are not considered for certain country specific scholarships even though you are a national of that country and/or domiciled there.

In this section, you are required to confirm that the information you are submitting is true and correct, to the best of your knowledge, that you are happy for us to share this information to scholarship donors, and that you understand that you will be asked to provide supporting documentation in the event that an award is offered to you.

Clicking Check Complete will run a check to ensure that you have completed all the required fields correctly and will direct you to any missing information/fields or data in the incorrect format.

There is no opportunity to change information you have entered once you have pressed the Submit button. Do not submit your application unless you are 100 per cent happy with the information you have entered.

We recommend that you save a version of your completed application before you submit it as you will not have access to the application, to change any details, or to view it, once you have submitted it. You can save your application as a PDF by clicking on Printer Friendly Version in the top right hand corner of the screen.

You submit your application by clicking Submit Application button.

The LSE Graduate Financial Support Application will be available until the deadline listed on the How to apply for a scholarship page. After this date, applicants who have started but not finished an application will have no opportunity to finish it, and applicants who have not started an application will not be able to apply. In any case, you are encouraged to apply as soon as possible as funds are limited.

When you have submitted your application, you will see an acknowledgement screen confirming that your application has been submitted, and the date it was submitted. If you do not see this screen, it may mean that your application has not been submitted. If you log back into the application, you will be able to verify whether it has been successfully submitted, since if it has been successfully submitted you will no longer be able to access the application.

Contact the Financial Support Office